Designer Michael S. Smith on Capturing the Romance of Old New York

Having decorated the White House, designer Michael S. Smith is a reputable source on classic American style. Learn how he captured the romance of Old New York with this classic Upper East Side townhouse, then take our home tour to see the results.

Michael S. Smith: So often these classical Upper East Side town houses are done in a modern, cool way, but there's something quite romantic and beautiful about an old New York, Henry James kind of house.

You have an unusually intimate relationship with the house.

When my friends bought it they said, 'We'd love for you to work on it for us.' And I said, 'Terrific — why don't I live in it while I'm renovating my apartment in the city?' So I had the luxury of living here for a year. I've always been intrigued by the notion of camping out in a glamorous way, like Elsie de Wolfe living at the St. Regis, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the Waldorf Towers — that sort of spontaneous, on-the-move decorating. At the same time, I was able to use a lot of my furniture for Baker. It really suited the house in a great way.

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What was the inspiration behind your furniture collection?

It's very much influenced by the idea of an old-school, traditional house. They're classical pieces with a generous, country-house scale. It's furniture you keep forever, not furniture of the moment.

There is a shadowy aspect to these rooms that seems to enhance the feeling of age. How do you bring that out?

By creating pools of light. You want lamps that cast shadows, the intimacy of candlelight. Intimate lighting draws you in. It's primal, like a campfire. Stairs and tall windows are super-romantic, and candlelight only intensifies that. Fabrics shimmer and woods feel more mellow. Moldings create shadows. The wood-paneled dining room is beautiful because it's shadowy — there's a dreaminess to the paneling. The de Gournay wallpaper in the bedroom creates its own shadows within its pattern, in turn creating a vista that plays with your perception of space. It also emphasizes all the moldings. The effect is dramatic, and really pretty.

I don't see any bright overhead lights in any of the rooms.

Downlighting banishes shadows and breaks the reverie — and it's not very flattering. I've learned from lighting designers that it's better to have light that just washes the walls and gives you the perception of brightness, rather than blasting the room with overheads. You need to have contrast for visual interest.

How about contrast in lighting from room to room?

If every room felt the same, you wouldn't really use every room. The breakfast room feels totally different from the dining room. It's flooded with natural light, and that speaks to this old-fashioned idea that there are different rooms for different times of day. It's great because it means you actually do rotate through the house and use all the rooms. And it's lovely to have a house where there's a progression from room to room when you have people over.

So where do you start when you're entertaining?

We might spread out a buffet on the kitchen island and then eat in the breakfast room. For a dinner party, we'll have drinks in the living room, and then we'll move across the hall to the dining room. I like to stick to the dining table to the bitter end — that's why the chairs had better be comfortable — because I think the minute you move away, you break it. People start to leave. But on a weekend night, it's different. People will stay longer, and we'll move into the living room and have all these small, intimate conversations.

What's the best party you've been to?

I went to a dinner party in Paris that was amazing. I'm usually good at projecting what a party will look like and how it will go. There's a kind of comfort for me to be able to do that. But this was completely unexpected. The 18th-century house was unexpected. The people were unexpected. The food was unexpected. The first course was a perfectly cooked soft-boiled egg from somebody's farm, served out of its shell in a silver container on a bed of slightly buttered rice. With salt and pepper. It was the most delicious egg, the most delicious rice, something so unbelievably plain and super-simple with everyone in black tie, all lit by candles.

Sounds exquisite.

But it really doesn't matter how fancy your house is or how fancy your food is. I went to a great party in California where the host served takeout Mexican food. What I remember was the graciousness and the effort to make the environment beautiful. And here in New York there was a party in a parking lot behind an apartment building where we all sat on folding chairs and watched Goodfellas. Everyone brought Italian food, and everyone was engaged and excited to be there on a hot summer night. It was exuberant. Entertaining is about being thoughtful and trying to create an experience that brings people together to share food and conversation in a way that's fun. It's about doing something special: a parking lot was made magical by stringing up Christmas lights and renting a projector and screen.